By this time tomorrow I will have received my new VP-180 which will complete my LCR upgrade. I picked up a pair of 11 month old M80'S earlier this week. My old setup was a pair of M60's and a VP-150, so I am really excited to get everything hooked up and configured.

As I was driving home today from work, I started to think about what my next upgrade should/would be. That got me starting to think about if I will have the right amount of power to really drive these new speakers. My receiver is a Denon 4810 and I am using it fo 5.1 + 2 height channels.
Should I or would I benefit from adding an AMP to drive the front channels? If so, what brand is recommended by Axiom or what brand do other members like?
Thank you in advance.

::grabs popcorn::

Yes.

No.

Well, it depends.

yes, and i like Krell..

Emotiva seems popular though.

http://emotiva.com/xpa3.shtm

they are having their 4th of july sale until the 18th, for 500$ for a 300W at 4ohm 3 channel that might be a good idea.

or
http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampsmult&1282675373&/Krell-250a/3-

more, but its 500W at 4ohms.

you will NOT get better sound quality, but it will enable you to play louder and when watching a movie the extra power will help with the sudden loud parts of the movie.

i have m60's and use to have a 135w per channel amp, and during movies that amp would be driven into clipping from time to time, with more powerful amps i don't have that problem anymore.

While we are waiting for the no and maybe people to weigh in, here are a couple of links on power and calculating power needed.

about power

calculator

Mel, pass the popcorn.



HTGeek, if that's the itch you want to scratch, I sincerely hope you have a great time. My opinion is that unless you are listening at fairly high volumes and are dissatisfied with the results, you're not going to get good "value" for that upgrade.

Krell makes great (and disproportionately expensive) amps. Getting a good used amp from Audiogon can be a good strategy; with no moving parts and no processing to speak of, amps are a pretty safe used purchase.

Lots of people have had success with pro style amps (Crown, QSC, etc.).

For the money and esp. now that they are on sale the XPA-3 is a good deal .

I am currently waiting for my M80's but it drives my VP180 with no issues with lots of head room.

I wouldn't go down this road till you hear the system with the Denon, it has more than enough power, although I did like my system when I ran onn's A1400-8 on it awhile ago. The bass from the M80s was outstanding and the highs were cleaned up considerably at high volume levels, it also sounded much more open and less compressed but that was with a $4000 amp. I like the idea of used amps from audiogon etc. or pro amps but you have to be wary of the fans they run for cooling, that extra bit of noise could bother some people.

Like I said I wouldn't go down this road till you try it with the Denon. I am in no hurry to get an amp inspite of the benefits I heard with the big A1400, my 3808 runs everything just fine and sounds great, for that extra little benefit is hard to justify the costs.

Jake has a good point, hook everything up, and watch a movie at your normal listening level, and see if you feel your missing anything.

I would think the 4810 would have plenty of balls, but only time will tell.

I am currently using an Emotiva XPA-5 amp and at 4 ohms it supplies 440wpc, and at 8 ohms it supplies 250wpc. it does wonders powering my M80v3 towers, VP180v3 center and as of tomorrow it will do wonders for the QS8v3 surrounds. it's a real workhorse, hasn't gotten real hot (it's gotten real warm but not real hot yet)and it gives the speakers everything they want when they want no matter the volume (of course i don't roll reference volume cause i want to keep my hearing!) they cost $799 with $25 shipping in the cont. USA. here is a picture with the front 3 soundstage, the XPA-5 is at the bottom left and my Onkyo SC-R5507P pre-amp is next to it. i am very happy and didn't break my bank either!

If you are going to get an emotiva, you will need to make a decision if you want to get the sale price, if you look at avsfroums, these amp are popular over there also.

Jeff, your "thinking" is premature to a gross degree. You haven't even received your VP-180 yet! Your 4810 is more than sufficient for the vast majority of home applications. There's no magic in separate amplifiers and they simply add what would be unused excess capacity in most cases.

Enjoy the great sound that you'll soon have.

hey john don't hate toooooo much, he sees a shiny new toy....

Dak, telling the truth isn't "hate".

Then what's that yellow rain than dakkon felt?

Well Geek I too think your best bet is to wait until the new speaker gets there, hook it up to your Denon, and throw everything you can at it and see if it meets and/or exceeds your expectations. If it does the job just fine, then save your money. If you feel it's clipping, or if it ends up shutting down on you (this happened to me once with my Denon 4802), then perhaps an external amp is just what the doctor ordered for you.

For me my Denon kept me happy 95% of the time. But I really like to crank my system up from time to time, and it left me wanting when I really pushed the volume up. So I went the Emotiva route (XPA-3) and it satisfied my cravings just fine. Like Dakkon said, an outboard amp isn't going to change the sound quality of your sound system until you're really pushing the volume level WAY up. Your Denon (and my Denon, and every other Denon) will be pushed into distortion when trying to extract it's peak power out of it. With the Emotiva running the show, if I'm pushing my system to the point that it's using say 150 watts of power (more than what the Denon is rated to produce), that's only half of the XPA-3's rated output (300 watts) at 4 ohms, so the distortion level will be much lower than if I were pushing the Denon to that level since amps begin to produce more distortion once it's being pushed to it's limits. Also, the Emotiva (or any other amp with as much or more power than the Emotiva) won't get pushed into clipping nearly as soon as the Denon will be.

But all of that depends on how high you turn that volume knob. That's why many here will tell you to see what your Denon does with your speakers at normal listening levels before you go out an purchase an amp. Because your Denon is pretty beefy, and will play louder than many here will EVER play it. So the question is, does it play loud/clean enough for your tastes? Or are you more like Dakkon, WID and myself and prefer something with a little more headroom so that you can really crank it from time to time without worrying about clipping and/or shutdowns.

Personally, I've been very happy with my Emotiva. However I don't recommend it for those people running Axiom's 4 ohm speakers since there have been so many mixed experiences with Emotiva amps and those Axiom products. I won't tell you not to try them out (they have a 30 day trial just like Axiom). But I won't tell you to try them out either. I would suggest you try Outlaw or Rotel for affordable amps.... Krell, McIntosh or the A1400-8 if you have the bucks for them.

But definately, just use the Denon for a few weeks or a month before you seriously consider any of those other amps.

Thanks for all the input and suggestions. I took a look at some of the offerings on Emotiva's website. Both the XPA-3 and XPA-5 look like great units for the money.

Right now I will get everything hooked up and calibrated. Then I will give the speakers a good workout with my Denon and see if I have any issues. Once that is done, if I feel that I still need an AMP I will look at possibly getting the XPA-3. It doesn't seem like I would need more than a three channel unit for my application.

micah if your using 150W from your emotiva, you are not close to having any distortion, you are well within the operating parameters of the amp, only when you get to the edge of the conducting region of a transistor does the distortion (clipping) start to increase.